The amount of data available to information seekers has grown astronomically, whether as the result of the proliferation of information sources on the Internet, or as a result of private efforts to organize business information within a company, or any of a variety of other causes. As the amount of available data grows, so does the need to be able to search through that information to locate specific items. A related problem is the need for users to properly construct queries in order to locate desired information.
Search systems include such systems as web search engines and database interfaces, among others. When a user performs a search for information, that user typically must create and construct a query that the user believes will produce desired results. The creation of such a query is prone to events that can negatively impact the accuracy of search results, such as spelling errors and lack of knowledge of relevant search terms. In many systems, queries may also tend towards long strings that can be unwieldy to enter. These and other factors can increase the time and effort needed to locate desired information.
User interfaces for search functions also impact both the ease of performing a search and the accuracy of search results. A typical interaction today involves a user typing some keywords to enter as a query, performing a search based on those keywords, and viewing the results. The user must predict what is a necessary or sufficient query to obtain desired results. Inaccurate predictions result in undesired results. Queries that are too short may inadequately refine the result set. Queries that are too long may inadvertently exclude desirable results. Queries that use an unfortunate choice of terms or operators may inadequately refine the results or exclude desirable results. A user may have to perform many iterations of this process until desired results are obtained. Therefore, there is a need for systems and methods that can minimize query errors and assist in query creation to perform effective searches.